“Show me what I want to see.”
Asherah hovered in a bubble of raging sea water. For anyone else, the salt would have ripped off their skin, the water filling their lungs and choking them until they floated to eventually fade to nothing.
For her, it was life.
Here, in her whirlpool of power, she could breathe. She could think. This was where no one could touch her—not even Skuld’s harsh power.
Feigning sleep, Asherah ignored Skuld’s command, as she always did. She had been doing the same thing for a hundred and twenty-five years. Why? Because the world she lived in was full of misery and pain. All she had ever been able to do was watch through her water to see snippets of what life looked like outside. And even then, she’d only been able to connect in moments of dire distress, namely to her sister Niamh—or Silva as she was called now.
“I know you can hear me, Asherah. Remember, I know the future.”
Yes, Skuld did, but there was a trick to that—a small piece of information she likely thought Asherah would never realize. Skuld could only see actions, not read minds. Asherah had figured it out when she’d decided to run away from her hell and fade into nothing instead of becoming the instrument of death Skuld wanted her to be.
The instrument to kill Niamh and change the course of the future irrevocably.
Skuld had not been aware of Asherah’s decision until she raced in the moment Asherah put herself under in the water prison. Simply seeing the moment Asherah decided to fight back had not given Skuld a chance to stop it.
Knowing the future did not make her all-powerful.
Through the water and in her mind, Asherah could see Skuld’s tall, lithe frame standing next to the bed, her fingers outstretched and spread wide. For a being that had lived thousands of years, Skuld was tragically beautiful.
Coal-black hair fell around her waist, the dark color matching her eyes. She’d been blessed with porcelain skin, cherry-red lips, and angular features humans would kill to possess. She was magnificent, even with the white horns which grew from her temples and curled around her ears like the inside of a spire. Skuld used her horns to “hear” the future and translate it into visions through her scrying bowl.
Although she hated her, Asherah saw the beauty of the sea in her captor.
“Last chance, Asherah. I’m growing tired of this game. I know the hate in your heart for Niamh. She left you, turned her back. If it weren’t for her, you’d never be here. Don’t you want to punish her? See her fail?”
Familiar pain lanced through Asherah’s chest. Yes, she could hear every word Skuld uttered. Yes, she was still angry at her sister. How could she not be? She may have forgiven the woman who now was Silva in the human world, but that didn’t take away her feelings about what had happened.
She left me to this fate. Not by her hand, but by her ignorance.
No. Asherah couldn’t think of it. Not now. Not with Skuld ready to pounce, to turn her waters murky and drag the rage from Asherah that could create a storm.
A rage that would cause death.
Because she was even angrier at Skuld.
Asherah instead focused on the blinding darkness of her prison walls. Here, in the Forgotten Tower, she was kept within Skuld’s domain of the In Between. It was just as dark as her captor, a monstrosity of smoothed onyx wall, a mass built straight from the ground up by Skuld’s magic. The windows were crystalline fixtures fitted into the walls so they could not open.
Asherah knew—she’d tried to jump to her death many times before.
The high arches over her head were inscribed with ancient runes of power and holding. Without them being broken, Asherah would never be able to escape. They glowed red from Asherah’s blood, a reminder she’d never leave.
“So be it, fallen princess of the Seelie.”
Dark wisps of curling power came from Skuld’s fingertips like smoke. Cloying and thick like tar, the miasma covered Asherah’s bubble. While Skuld was the future-seeing Norn, she also had the gift of manifesting what may one day be.
For Asherah, the pollution of the sea could be used to smother her.
Oil spread through the bubble around her, the whirlpool hastening the process until Asherah could taste it on the back of her throat. White bags made of a material she’d never seen—except when Skuld did this—twisted around her ankles and wrists. Asherah couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
This was how Asherah’s power was dying. How the world could destroy the very thing that gave them life. It choked her, yanked her prone form back and forth in the thick sludge.
“You see, they don’t care as much about your sea as they once did. They don’t worship it and give praise to the animals that feed them from its depths. They drain it, drill into the crust, and throw their trash into it without a care. This is all that’s left for you. A world where your sister hasn’t kept your name alive and powerful.”
Asherah did not want to believe it. She couldn’t.
When she’d walked among the Fae, both the Seelie and Unseelie had given prayers and asked for blessings from the goddess of the sea, and by extension, Asherah was also paid homage. Because of her affinity to the sea, and her ability to control it to a degree, she was seen as an acolyte of the goddess. Much like Niamh had been viewed as an acolyte of the goddess of earth. Asherah and Niamh had been two halves of a whole, the sea and the land. Inseparable, powerful forces to bow to.
